Collaboration

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the wartime collaboration, see Collaborationism.

Related terms: Co-operation Coordination

Collaboration is the process people with different ways of seeing the world interact to learn from each other in order to get better at what ever they are trying to do.

People use the processes of coordination and communication to build a sense of belonging with people who see the world the same way as they do.

Contents 1 A high-performing collaboration team 2 Benefits of collaboration 3 Why collaboration often fails 4 Barriers to collaboration 5 Need for new approach to cross the three barriers to collaboration 6 Wartime collaboration 7 Commercial / scientific collaboration 8 Musical collaboration 9 See also 10 References 11 External links

[edit] A high-performing collaboration team

A high performing collaboration team will make it quicker and cheaper for people with different ways of seeing the world to learn from each other in a way that improves participates ability to succeed at what ever it it they are doing.

[edit] Benefits of collaboration

Collaboration is ideal when people who see the world from a different point of view have to achieve similar goals.

[edit] Why collaboration often fails

The diversity of viewpoints makes it hard for people to agree. Even if members do manage to agree they are very likely to be agreeing from a different perspective. This is often called a cultural boundary.

[edit] Barriers to collaboration

There are three major barriers to quick and cost effective collaboration

1. Time, we spend less face-to-face time together. In today's organisations most people have to manage differing priorities of their manager and different stakeholders. This makes it harder for people to spend extended time together even if they are based in the same office.

2. Distance, more of us are based in different locations or work from home.

3. Culture, many people work in organisational cultures that inhibit effective collaboration. For example:

• A culture where rank or job title is important makes it hard for a lower rank person who may be more qualified than their superior for the job it had to collaborate. The lower rank person is told what to do. This is not collaboration
• "stranger danger"; which can be expressed as a reluctance to share with others unknown to you
• "needle in a haystack"; people believe that others may have already solved your problem but how do you find them
• "hoarding"; where people do not want to share knowledge because they see hoarding as a source of power
• "Not Invented Here"; the avoidance of previously performed research or knowledge that was not originally developed within the group/institution.

Whilst much of the discussion around the topic of collaboration refers to the use of IT, perhaps more research is required on how to provide an effective social process that will help overcome the barriers!

[edit] Need for new approach to cross the three barriers to collaboration

Previous attempts to make it quicker and cheaper for people to collaborate across culture, time and distance have looked at the cultural boundaries, and the time and distance boundaries separately. Management experts ran face-to-face workshops and IT departments implemented technology to cross the time and distance boundaries.

Both failed to meet their promises when it came to implementing new cultures for people separated by time and distance. This is because the boundaries become dependent on each other. They cannot be crossed separately.

The time and distance boundaries are easily crossed using software with the following functionality:

• email
• discussion forum
• instant messaging
• document authoring
• blogging
• polling or voting
• video conferencing

But cultural differences make it difficult for people to collaborate. So giving people technology, without it being linked to their cultural boundaries just gives people more ways of collaborating inefficiently, hence we get hundreds of emails a day.

However, crossing the cultural boundaries without using technology is impossible. This is because people are not together long enough and the local culture which people experience on a day-to-day basis will always dominate.

[edit] Wartime collaboration

Main article: Collaborationism

As a pejorative term, the word "collaboration" can describe the treason of cooperating with enemy forces occupying one's country. As such it implies criminal deeds in the service of the occupying power, including complicity with the occupying power in murder, persecutions, pillage, and economic exploitation as well as participation in a puppet government.

The use of "collaboration" to mean "traitorous cooperation with the enemy," dates from 1940, originally in reference to the Vichy Regime in France, the French civilians who sympathised with Nazi Germany's doctrine, and voluntary troops (LVF) who fought against the Free French and later De Gaulle's French Force. Since then, the words collaboration and collaborateur have this very pejorative meaning in French ( and the abbreviation collabo has only this pejorative and insulting meaning).

During World War II, those accused of collaboration with Axis Powers included:

• Wang Jingwei and his government (China)
• Vidkun Quisling (Norway)
• The Ustaše (Croatia)
• The government of Vichy France
• The successive governments of Georgios Tsolakoglou, Konstantinos Logothetopoulos and Ioannis Rallis in Greece
• Léopold III of Belgium (found innocent)
• Anton Mussert (Netherlands)
• Milan Nedić (Serbia)
• Jozef Tiso (Slovakia)
• Pierre Laval (France)
• Maurice Papon (France)
• Andrei Vlasov (USSR)
• Reza Shah Pahlavi (Iran)
• P. G. Wodehouse (only informally accused)
• SS units recruited in occupied countries

See also Non-German cooperation with Nazis during World War II.

[edit] Commercial / scientific collaboration

Even if the term collaboration has a lot of negative meaning and especially in France is not very usual (see Crozier, M. The Bureaucratic Phenomenon, Chicago 1964) there is a neutral to positive root for the term. There are various variants of multi client and/or multi contractor work. Open collaboration with market near products needs tight non disclosure agreements excluding background or previously known information from the protected intellectual property rights.(see also an example Collaborative Research and Development Agreement).

• The first step for collaboration is that the partners get known to each other- this might be facilitated by research directories like Network for European medium and large transport research facilities.
• The second step is the compatibility of the aims of the organisations at least in the segment the project is located.
• The personal preconditions comprise the ability to communicate (also with regards to the technical terms) and the willingness to share ideas and develop them further together in a possibly previously unknown direction.

The term collaboration is also used for electronic work benches for example referred to as collaboratory by Mathcad (see also Internet Groupware for Scientific Collaboration

[edit] Musical collaboration

Musical collaboration occurs when one or more musicians in different places or groups work on the same album or song. Collaboration between musicians, especially with regards to jazz, is often heralded as the epitome of complex collaborative practice. Special software has been written to facilitate musical collaboration over the internet, such as VSTunnel.

[edit] See also

• Collaborative learning-work
• Collaborative software
• Conference call
• Consensus
• Design thinking
• Mass collaboration
• Puppet government
• Resistance movements
• Unorganisation

[edit] References

• "collaborate." Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (13 Aug. 2005).
• Sandor Schuman (Editor). Creating a Culture of Collaboration. Jossey-Bass, 2006. ISBN 0-7879-8116-8

[edit] External links

• Collaborative On-Line Learning and Research
• Internet Real-Time Collaboration with OpenSpace-Online
• Platform focusing on collaboration amongst research facilities in European transport research more...
• Group Facilitation and Collaboration Forum
• The Far Games A list of games using theatrical improvisation to encourage collaboration and distributed leadership
• Collaborative Information Management with Hyperwave - ECM + Real Time Collaboration + eLearning